Sequencing events in a story can be difficult for students. This is one of my favorite lessons to teach because it really engages my students. It makes them
These all about me, back to school art activities for kids are engaging icebreakers. Encourage creativity and build community during the first week back
I love cooking so much I sometimes think of recipes in my sleep and wake up to write them down! This dream-inspired dish is my family's favorite way to eat chicken. —Holly Kilbel, Akron, Ohio
Along with orienting your new students to the classroom and classroom procedures, the first few days of school provide a great opportunity for some community building exercises. A few years ago we featured this fabulous board and thought it offered a great jumping off point for a collaborative project as well as classroom decoration for the first few weeks of school! "I Am Unique" Puzzle Piece Craftivity We love using the puzzle illustration to show students that each of them, with their different abilities, interests, and skills, have a special and important part to play in the classroom community - i.e. it takes all of the unique puzzle pieces, fit into their unique places, to create a whole picture. As a fun first day of school craftivity, provide each of your new students with a colorful card stock puzzle piece cutout, old magazines, and various graphic art materials, inviting them to use the materials to decorate their puzzle piece with pictures, words, and illustrations that describe who they are, what they like to do, etc. To extend the activity, have students select the three things they'd like to share about themselves with you and their new classmates, expounding a little bit on each one. For example, instead of simply saying, "I like to craft", have them tell you what they like to craft, etc. The best part is, each of the individual puzzle pieces can then be fitted together to create a colorful mural for the classroom! In This Class, You Are A SPECIAL Piece Of The Puzzle! Here's how we would tackle a puzzle bulletin board... Find a puzzle template online (with the appropriate number of pieces) and use the classroom projector system to enlarge and trace the pieces onto background paper. Use a pencil to number the back of each piece, then cut the pieces apart. Once students have decorated their piece, the puzzle should be relatively easy to order and assemble using the numbers on the back. Since your students will be doing most of the decorating, all you'll need is background paper to cover the board, a fun trimmer, and some bulletin board letters to complete the display!
Which teacher are you? Do love choice boards? Are you afraid to try them? Never heard of them? IF a teacher has used choice boards, chances are they LOVE them.
These are the fully editable headings that I made and used to create my Netflix bulletin. I have left them editable on word so you can adjust them to suit the size and style you need. The Bookflix idea was not my own but this is what I used to create my own!
These all about me, back to school art activities for kids are engaging icebreakers. Encourage creativity and build community during the first week back
Embracing your true love for nursing comes with true spirit! Check out these 7 coquette nurse app icons that will help you do just that!
I LOVE smash books. They are so much fun. The fancier they are the more I like them but when it came to making my own, lets be honest, “Ain’t nobody go time for that.” I wish that I could create a beautiful doodled page in a few minutes but they would take me hours. Have you […]Continue Reading
This post may contain affiliate links.You know those days where you can’t find the activity that you want to do, and all you can find in your bag is some paper. I have no problem making any activity that I find therapeutic, so I pull out the paper and want to work on writing. Well...
It's the last day before our two-week winter break, and I can safely say that most of us teachers are as excited as the students! I finishe...
Add directed drawings to your kindergarten classroom. Your students will absolutely love following the directions to create their own directed drawing.
These all about me, back to school art activities for kids are engaging icebreakers. Encourage creativity and build community during the first week back
Binkies. Pacifiers. Like most parents, I have always had a love/hate relationship with them. I love them because they help comfort my child while giving me a couple minutes of sanity. I hate them when it is time to start making them disappear. All four of my boys have used binkies. Looking back I realize […]
Why I Don’t Use Exit Tickets
Did I miss anything while I was out? What did we do in class yesterday? Do I owe anything from when I was absent? 😵💫 It can be a lot. Especially when multiple students were absent. Trying to remember all of this information is taxing. That's why I love my system for organizing absent work. It put the responsibility on the student to gather their work, and everything they need to know about what they missed is ready and waiting for them.
Fall flavors are some of the best, especially in cocktail form! Check out these seasonal fall cocktails to enjoy as the leaves fall.
Do you hate to teach poetry? Do you want your students to learn and enjoy poetry? Try these simple ways to learn how to teach poetry...
Share your school values from the moment your students enter the front door.
Looking to grab students' attention during the first week of school with fun and easy science experiments? These super fun back to school science experiments are perfect for your first week of school science activities.
No elementary school counseling office is complete without these seven school counseling games that help teach social skills and calming strategies
Why do I love them so much? Because they love systems and I LOVE SYSTEMS. Even more than in my house, I LOVE having classroom systems. I think oftentimes we
Are you looking for some letter board quote inspiration? Check out all of the sayings I've used in the past year for each of my articles. Words of love, inspirational quotes on motherhood, Easter, Halloween, Christmas and down right funny puns and sayings | Head over to A Visual Merriment to check them out | motivational quotes and signs | how to display your favorite sayings | Cute Quotes | Message Board Quotes | Quote Board | Sign Quotes | Felt Letter Board #inspirational #quotes #words
I LOVE using centres with my students! My students love them, and will choose many of the centres to play during indoor recess instead of lego and other toys. It rained this week and one of my boys chose to build with magnets on cookie trays! Setting clear routines is the most important part. Take the time to teach the games to your students so that they understand how to play properly. If they haven't mastered the French vocab, then you will have behavioural and focus issues come up. With younger students, make sure you practice the game as a whole class many times before you introduce it as a centre. Set-up: I use the cards from my "j'ai fini" board as the centre rotation cards, as the centres are all things they can also choose to do if they finish their work early. I recently updated the file to include centre group cards, so you can write their names on the group # cards to set up your groups before they come to class. Normally my "j'ai fini" board is set up like this: Since they're on magnets, it's really easy to move them over to the other side of my whiteboard to set up the centres. I line them up vertically and put the group # cards beside them. I have each centre set up on a table group (except bug in a rug, they play on the carpet). I review the rules of each centre with them, and the CLEAN UP rules. We talk about what each centre should look like when it's been properly cleaned up. They get started at their centres, and I work with my small group at my table. When I'm done with them (about 10 minutes) I ding my bell. This means clean up and come back to the carpet. Once they're all back at the carpet, we look around to check that the room is cleaned up properly. Any groups who wrote on whiteboards are able to read a sentence they wrote to the class. This is our sharing centre. Then I move the centre cards on the whiteboard down one spot, and tell each group where they are going for their next centre. Here are some of the centres I do: 1. Bang game: Put all the vocab you’re practicing in a container. Students pull out a card. If they can say it in French (or use it in a sentence, to make it harder) then they can keep the card. If they pull a card that says “bang” then they get another turn (or lose all their cards, your choice!) You can use any empty yogurt container or plastic tupperware. Just make sure they can't see through the container! Some of my students like to play bang and then write the words they won on a whiteboard! 2. Bug in a rug: Lay out the vocab in a grid. One student hides the “bug” under a card, while the other students close their eyes. They guess in French which vocab card it’s hidden under. Whoever finds the bug gets to hide it next. This game requires an honest conversation with your students about why cheating will ruin the fun of the game! 3. Go fish: You can print any of the flashcards you're using in class. Copy them 2 or 4 per page to make them smaller. 4. Word building: Magnets on cookie trays! My students use our visual dictionaries or word wall strips to choose their words/sentences to build. These awesome magnets come from wintergreen. This set is much cheaper, but you'd likely need multiple sets. The cookie trays are from the dollar store. Ideally you want small magnets so they can fit more words on the cookie tray. 5. Sentence building: Print squares with a variety of sentence starters, numbers, colours, and objects. Students then put the words in order to build sentences. You can extend this by having them read their sentences to a partner, or write their sentences on a whiteboard/in their journals. 6. "Pictionary": One student draws on a whiteboard, the other student has to guess what they are drawing. 7. Matching: Picture to the word. My students use our visual dictionaries to check their work over when they're done! 8. Cootie catchers/fortune tellers with a partner. 9. Bingo - 1 group member can be the bingo caller, others put tokens on the words that are called. I use these as the bingo tokens. 10. Writing on whiteboards - 11. Hunting for sight words - 12. Cube game - Roll the cube and answer the question. Extension - write the question! I bought the cubes here, and write different prompts on sticky notes to slide under the plastic. 13. SMACK game - One student says the word, whoever smacks it first gets to say the next word! 14. Spin and graph sight words - 15. Stamp the sight words, themed vocab, or sentences! 16. Write the sight words - I bought salt from the dollar store and added a few drops of food colouring, then gave it a good shake. Students use a sharp pencil to write words in the salt! 17. Read and clip - 18. Spinner games - I use these in centres to give my students prompts for oral communication or writing. They can spin the spinner and either say a sentence or write a sentence. They can review vocabulary in partners (one spins, one says the word). 19. Working with Mlle - The BEST part about centres is that it means I can pull small groups to work with. Do you have any centres you love? Feel free to share in the comments :)
Let's Have a Lemonade Tasting (A Fun End of Year Experience) 8 comments End of Year, Freebies, Lemonade Day, Lemonade Tasting Today we had a Lemonade Tasting, and it was so much fun! I typically do several themed days at the end of the year. We've run out of curriculum, the kids are in summer mode, and it's an easy way to keep them engaged with meaningful learning up until the end. So, what goes into a lemonade tasting? Let's find out! As the students walked in to the room today, they were greeted with these pink and yellow ribbon streamers. To attach them to the door frame, I simply taped them with Scotch tape. Nothing fancy, I promise. Then, I taped a few lemon slice cut outs to the ends of a few pieces of the ribbon. You can grab the lemon cut outs HERE. We started the day by making new words from the words "cold lemonade." Some really great words they came up with include "noodle," "candle," and "melon." This got them ready for the next thing: the lemonade tasting! We headed outside to our courtyard where I served the students small portions of pink and yellow lemonade. Small, as in, those are bathroom sized cups. ;) To add a bit of novelty to this experience, I made drink tickets for the students to cash in when they grabbed their lemonade. This actually helped make sure the process remained orderly. As a student approached the table, he/she dropped his/her ticket in the provided bucket and then grabbed the matching drink. They loved their little tickets! After the tasting, we came inside and conducted a whole group poll to find out which flavor of lemonade was most popular. The students graphed the results and then answered some questions about their graph. I gave each student a wristband (card stock cut into strips and labeled "Team Pink" and "Team Yellow") to represent their favorite drink. This helped them to be consistent during the poll. Second graders sometimes forget their choice when participating in activities like this. Hehe. Plus, they thought it was pretty cool to sport their paper bracelet for the day. You can grab the drink tickets and bracelet templates HERE. After graphing our favorite picks, the students brainstormed words to describe their favorite lemonade and then wrote opinion pieces about which lemonade they liked best. The opinion pieces were written in these super fun shape books. After all that sitting and writing, it was time to get up and move a bit! We played a game of I Spy. We used these lemonade themed money word problem task cards to review our problem solving (and money counting) skills. Finally, we practiced our parts of speech skills by completing this lemonade themed word sort. Some of the words really got them thinking and it was fun to hear them talk it out with their teaching buddies. The question of the day was whether they should put "drink" in the noun or verb category. It was so great to hear them think it out. Ultimately, they decided it went with the verbs so that each category would have an equal number of words. So logical! (But, for the record, I would have accepted its placement in either category). Our Lemonade Tasting was lots of fun! The kids absolutely loved it! Best of all, they were engaged in all of the activities and didn't even realize that they were still learning! All of these activities, plus more can be found in my Let's Have a Lemonade Tasting! pack on TPT. What are your favorite end of year themes? DON'T FORGET IT, PIN IT! Share It:
These 8 pictures are perfect for a picture dictation activity. I have used them a lot this past course! Students get in pairs or small groups and while one of the students is describing the picture the others draw what their partner is saying on a board or piece of paper. Students can also use these pictures to write descriptive essays. ================================================================== If you use this product, I’d love to hear from you! Any feedback is so appreciated♥️ Instagram: The Teachers Land TPT: Follow my store and be the first to know about new products!
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Here is a great STEM activity that I love to do with my students in the Spring Time. I put students into groups and follow this outline to create a board game. In this download, there is an outline for students to follow, a rubric, and some sample game boards for them to use. Get ready to have the c...
Name posters are an easy art project for the first day of school and also double as classroom decor!
The Best Dad Jokes that will have the family belly laughing. We found the Best Dad Jokes, not just ok ones, but the Best Dad Jokes, The corniest of them all!
These all about me, back to school art activities for kids are engaging icebreakers. Encourage creativity and build community during the first week back
As you travel along this journey called life, do you live in alignment with your values? Are you in sync with your moral compass? Do you make decisions based on your ethics? In this post, I cover how to identify and define your values and how to live your life in reflection of them.
